


We Wish You a Scary Solstice

by alitbitmoody



Series: Metamour [1]
Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: (because that's safer for everybody involved), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, Gen, Meg Halsey Lives, Polyamory, References to Lovecraftian Lore, V-Shaped Relationship, and is Herbert West's lab partner, and there's really no such thing as 'fluff' in Reanimator fandom, except there's no such thing as Christmas in Arkham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 16:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alitbitmoody/pseuds/alitbitmoody
Summary: Arkham native Meg Halsey has a track record of "odd" holiday seasons. Taking her boyfriend's boyfriend on a tour of her hometown is among the more unique.





	We Wish You a Scary Solstice

“That’s a full cadaver!” 

After nearly two months of cohabitation, Meg doesn’t know that much can shock her anymore. Seeing a bisected nude man strapped and wriggling on the lab table in the basement is evidently one of those things. The perverse relief that it’s the _upper half_ of the body is swiftly quashed by the vacant, dead stare that meets her gaze, before giving way to still more distressed thrashing.

“Technically, it’s only half a cadaver,” West replies, not looking up. “Don't worry. I’ve got it restrained.”

“Not the point!” Meg says, setting a plate of cold roast beef and potato chips on a side table. An otherwise uneventful week with her boyfriend's boyfriend leading up to the holidays had made her amenable to a kind gesture -- she should have known better. 

“What is ‘the point’ then?” he asks, sarcastically. “And if you’re not going to sum it up in five words or less, please pass me that hemostat clamp.”

“There are rules in this house.” She pushes the clamp across the table to him, steel scraping against steel. “'No stealing body parts from school.' We talked about this and you agreed.”

“Thank you.” He grabs the clamp from the table and fixes the teeth over one open section of skin, allowing the weight of the thing to hold the wound open. “I understand your concern. And, not that it matters, but I didn’t steal this one – I signed it out for independent study. Our agreement is, therefore, intact.”

“You’re on a leave of absence,” she replies. Secure in the knowledge because she had delivered the paperwork to the Dean of Students’ office herself. “There is no such thing as an independent study when you’re not attending classes and you can’t just _sign out_ body parts!”

“You can if they are being used in an approved lab space," he says, gesturing to the room around them with the scalpel. "Which this is.”

“What?”

“See for yourself,” he sets the scalpel down on the table with a loud clank. a stack of stapled pages from the top of the mini-fridge, passes them to her.

Meg eyes the pages, reads the fine print twice, notes the two signatures from the department head on the third and fifth pages. She’s seen enough people try to forge Uncle Upton’s signature over the years – this is not a forgery. She can almost feel the air leaving her body.

“Are you quite satisfied?”

“Sometimes I really wonder how the university is still standing.”

“Well, if what I heard can be believed, parts of it aren’t. The library alone was renovated in the 1930s. Something about–”

“Invisible monsters and giants living in the hills. Yeah, I know. You and Dan have this uncanny ability to forget that  _I_  actually grew up here. The two of you are just tourists.”

“'Tourists?’”

“He’s been here for two years. You’ve been here four months. _Tourists_ ,” she says, flatly, watching as the cadaver begins to spasm violently. “You’re going to need more than physical restraints for this one. Where’s the hydromorphone?”

–

It’s mostly a throwaway – something she can hold over Herbert’s head the way he holds things over hers. Until two days later, when the snow’s beginning to fall and he silently appears next to her chair, coat on, gloves in hand.

“Right. Do you fancy an outing?”

“Excuse me?” 

“Dan’s in a meeting with the financial aid office before they close next week. As you pointed out, I am a... _tourist_ in this area, and you haven’t left the house in three days. Give me a tour.”

The shock of Herbert voluntarily leaving the house and the basement lab is almost enough to make her forgive the imperious tone, more command than question.

Almost.

“Ask me nicely,” she retorts.

"Please, Miss Halsey, I am but a humble stranger–”

“I would _not_ call you 'humble’–”

“–would you do me the honor on taking me on a tour of your birth place?” 

Close enough.

“Get your scarf.”

–

Arkham looks more like a Norman Rockwell painting than any city with its history has a right to in the middle of December. French Hill is already covered with a blanket of snow as they make their way up the high street, past the historic district and the tiny hole-in-the-wall shops designed to appeal to visiting families and unsuspecting visitors passing through on their way to more "scenic" towns.

“Witches?” Herbert drawls skeptically. He clearly has not noticed the red holly branches and banners adorning the shop windows, most of which bear the word “SOLSTICE” and not “CHRISTMAS.”

Meg smirks. “I know it sounds preposterous. Call it what you want – the short version is half of Salem got angry with the other half and started screaming 'witches!’ All very funny until the people actually started getting arrested and executed. So, about twelve families and some of their more colorful neighbors picked up and moved thirty miles north, close to the river.”  
  
“To avoid being hanged,” he says, dumping his empty coffee cup in a nearby trash can. “As  _witches_ .”  
  
“Or burned as witches,” she offers. “Did you really not learn this in history class?”

“They didn’t cover much American colonial history in Toronto public schools.”

She swallows and chokes as her hot chocolate goes down the wrong pipe. Herbert examines her as if from a distance before stepping in to thump her back. Once.

“I’m sorry,” she sputters when she stops coughing, almost laughing. “It’s just…you’re _Canadian_!”

“Yes," he replies, slowly, like she's a patient with a head injury, or Dan after a spate of giggles. "I was aware of that.”

“Sorry, I’m just thinking – all of the time I wanted to get you kicked out, I could have just had you deported,” she jokes, sardonically, taking another sip of hot chocolate to soothe the burning in her throat.

“Hmmm. You could still try but it’s difficult to deport someone who has an active student visa – particularly one that your father signed off on.”

“Now I’m wondering why that wasn’t in your file.” If she hadn’t thought of it, Hill most certainly would have used it to his advantage on the irritating pupil who badgered him about stolen research and his flawed reasoning.

“I lived in New York for four years before Zürich. I technically have a dual citizenship application in progress… somewhere.”

“You haven’t checked recently?”

“I _did_ have quite a few other things on my mind when I first came back.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I guess you did. Let’s take a left up here.”

“Where to now?”

“The star attraction. Come on, follow me.”

The hill is steep and the accumulating snow makes it a slippery climb. Meg is impressed that West is able to keep pace with her until they reach the summit, looking over a ragged inlet of rippling water. The scent of effluent and run off from the hospital hits her in her face, forcing her to take a step back, right into West, standing with his feet planted.

“What is this?” he asks, curiosity piqued.

“This is the Miskatonic River. And, way down there, is the Gardner Reservoir. Also known as the 'Blasted Heath' Reservoir. It’s where we get our drinking water.”

“Noteworthy.”

“You don’t know the half of it," she says, pausing dramatically. She can feel the story un-spooling slowly, familiar words unspoken since her last trip to the river with Dan, eighteen months before. "A hundred years ago, this was all farmland. Dairy and livestock, some wheat and apple orchards. One of the larger farms was owned by the Gardner family – mom, dad, three boys. Good neighbors, active members of the community, 'nice quiet folk.' Until one day, their farm was struck by a meteorite.”

“A meteorite.” West looks skeptical.

She nods. “It drew in all the local astronomers, scientists from Boston. They took scrapings and soil samples from the impact crater -- a bunch of them are supposed to be in the archives at MU's archaeology department. Some people say it was too heavy to move, some people say it started shrinking.”

“Meteorites are inorganic. They can’t–”

“Can I finish my story?”

“Fine.”

“So, after all the academics left, and the meteorite was removed – or disappeared – the farm was plagued by a blight. The orchards started to die. The cattle grew sickly and withered away. The family grew ill. The theory is that the drinking water was contaminated – some people say the mother and middle brother went insane, possibly from bacterial infection, possibly prions. No one knows for sure because, rather than take them into town to see a doctor, the father built rooms for them in the attic, one right across from the other. Where they could scream at each other and yell down to the others.”

She’s got him -- she can tell. Herbert’s listening intently, the contemptuous mask slipping, revealing the morbid curiosity underneath.

“The father withdrew his sons from the local school, stopped going to church, stopped coming in for groceries and necessities. Rumors started to spread that the family were taken by the same illness that killed their livestock. Eventually, when friends and local law enforcement intervened, they found Mr. Gardner dead in the living room. His wife was still locked in her attic chamber, two of his three sons at the bottom of the well. They couldn’t have been dead more than a matter of weeks, but their bodies were completely desiccated and covered with adiopocere.”

That detail had come to Meg later, as a young student taking AP Bio, peering through the records in the university library; how moist environments took months to create what the Gardner children were covered in after a handful of days. 

“Eventually, the state took eminent domain on the land and dynamited it.”

“To... contain the spread of the blight?”

Meg nods, points out over the reservoir. “And to build that.”

She has given this tour many times over the years, usually to girls at slumber parties, organizing secretive midnight runs from her father’s living room through the woods to the top of the hill. One time, that first disastrous birthday after her mother died, she had taken them to the edge of the reservoir, daring each of her friends to take a swim with her, then stripping down to her underwear and jumping when one-by-one, each of them refused.

“I find it sort of convenient, don’t you?” he asks. “That an entire family would perish shortly before Arkham needed land for a reservoir. It seems a rather fortunate bit of happenstance.”

“Ah! Your brilliant and devious mind _would_ think that! But no, the reservoir was built forty years after the Gardner family’s demise, leaving the locals with diminished food stores and the state of Massachusetts with a piece of choice real estate they couldn’t give away.“

Herbert watches her carefully waiting for what must seem like still another shoe to drop in her wild and wondrous tale.

Meg draws it out, then simply shrugs. “If there’s one thing this town can do, it’s take a horrific situation and find a way to turn it to its benefit.”

“...charming.” His tone is muted, enchantment genuine, with a blush darker than what the cold left behind and that sets off a bubble of hysteria in her somewhere. Hysterical laughter percolating for months, finally let loose. Her chest hurts and her mouth feels tight when she finally looks up to see Herbert smiling as well, nearly laughing with her as he laughs with Dan. 

“I’m about to hug you," she blurts out, surprising them both. "If you object, speak now.”

“Clarify, please.”

“You amuse me. No other motive.”

He doesn’t object.

Hugging West is different than when she hugs Dan. He doesn't return it for one thing, arms folded placidly across his chest. But he's warm and he lets her hold on for a long time, and he also doesn't object when she takes his gloved hand as the two of them skid back down the hill.

\--

Dan and Mona are both in the living room by the time they get back — the former bathing a pale paw lazily while perched on the former‘s lap. The overhead lights are off and Meg's eyes are drawn to the large Douglas Fir mounted in the corner of the living room, red and white fairy lights flickering against the dark.

"Hey, you two," their partner smiles sleepily, sitting up in his chair. "Welcome back.“

“You put the tree up!” Meg grins, stomping the snow out on the welcome mat while she and West struggle out of their boots.

“Yeah, I got a good deal from the lot," he grins, dropping a kiss on top of Meg's head and helping Herbert remove his coat. "I wanted something larger this year, something that would fit all three of us.”

“It's wonderful.”

“Hmm, it is lovely,” Herbert says, clipped. “It’s also a fire hazard and I don't actually celebrate Christmas.”

“Good, because it's Solstice,” Meg answers easily. “‘Festival’ if you go to Kingsport. And you don't have to actually celebrate – you just have to pretend to like Dan’s cooking for two whole days.”

“Hey!”

“ _Three_ whole days,” she corrects, watching Herbert’s face as it morphs through several emotions at once, the tightness around his mouth loosening.

“I suppose I can manage that.” He answers, aplomb intact.

“You also have to make an ornament for the tree,” Dan adds.

“Acceptable,” he nods.

Their partner is already turning toward the hall when Dan suddenly interjects.

“Not from something in the basement!”

The door slams.

“He’s already gone,” Meg sighs.

“I know."

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from this [track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYQ8bcDaMaI). 
> 
> Meg refers to Uncle Upton being the head of the medical school -- that would be the son of Daniel Upton from _The Thing on the Doorstep_. Why the namesake of Edward Derby would want to go anywhere near Miskatonic is anyone's guess, but, chronologically, he's about the right age and Arkham natives have a habit of sticking around. The rumors Herbert overheard about the decimation of the library refers to the events of _The Dunwich Horror_. The Gardner Reservoir and Meg's subsequent tale refer to the events of _The Colour Out of Space_.
> 
> Herbert West being Canadian and attending undergrad at NYU are both details gleaned from Jeff Rovin's novelization.


End file.
